I
The blow fell without warning, and a typewritten notice informed the Poet that the Cabinet Committee on Accommodation required the tiny, thread-bare chambers in Stafford's Inn, where he had lived unobtrusively for seven happy, insolvent years.
"'There was no worth in the fashion; there was no wit in the plan,'" murmured the Poet. The rooms were too small even for a Deputy-Director-General, and he knew that not one of the silk-stockinged, short-skirted, starling-voiced young women with bare arms and regimental badges, who acted as secretaries to Deputy-Director-Generals, would consent to walk up four flights of creaking, uncarpeted stairs to the dusty sparrows' nest on the housetop that was his home.
For a while he scented a vendetta, but—deleterious poetry apart—he had injured no man, and the personnel of the Cabinet Committee was as little known to him as his poetry to the Cabinet Committee. In general, too, he was the object of a certain popularity and pitying regard; the Millionaire sent him presents of superfluous game each year, the Iron King invited him at short notice to make a fourteenth at dinner and the Official Receiver unloaded six bottles of sample port wine when the Poet succumbed to his annual bronchitis. Even the notice of eviction was politely worded and regretful; it was also uncompromising in spirit, and the Poet made his hurried way to four house-agents. No sooner had he started his requirements to be a bed-sitting-room (with use of bath) within the four-mile radius than all four agents offered him a Tudor manor house in Westmoreland; further, they refused to offer him anything else, but on his own initiative he discovered a studio in Glebe Place and a service-flat in Victoria Street.
"I saw in the paper that you'd been turned out," said the Millionaire that night, when the Poet trudged home, footsore and fretful, to find his chambers occupied by the Iron King, the Private Secretary, the Lexicographer, the Military Attaché and their friends. "What are you going to do about it?" he continued with the relentlessness of a man who likes a prompt decision, even if it be a wrong one. "You know nothing about business, I'm sure; leases, premiums, insurance, all that sort of thing. You're in a hole; I don't see what more there is to be said."
So far the Poet, his mind wavering wearily between Glebe Place and
Victoria Street, had said nothing; he turned silently to the Iron
King, wondering how, without being rude, to indicate his desire
for bed.
"I saw rather a decent place that might suit you," drawled the
Private Secretary, smoothing a wrinkle out of his shapely silk
socks. "It's next to my Chief's in Belgrave Square. Of course,
I don't know what rent they want for it…"
The Iron King shook his head.
"He couldn't afford it," he said, speaking through and around and over the Poet. "Now I'm told that there are some very comfortable and cheap boarding-houses near Kensington Palace Gardens…."
The Poet drew the cork of a fresh bottle of whisky and collected four unbroken tumblers, a pewter mug and two breakfast cups without handles. As so often before, his destiny seemed to be slipping out of his control into the hands of the practical, strong-voiced men who filled his sitting-room to overflowing and would not let him go to bed. The Military Attaché knew of a maisonnette in Albemarle Street; the Official Receiver had been recently brought into professional contact with a fine Georgian property in Buckinghamshire, where they could all meet for a week-end game of golf at Stoke Pogis. Somewhere in Chelsea—not Glebe Place—the Lexicographer had seen just the thing, if only he could be quite sure about the drains…. With loud cheerfulness they accepted the Millionaire's postulate that the Poet knew nothing of business; unselfishly they placed all their experience and preferences at his disposal.
"Of course, there's the servant problem," an undistinguished voice remarked two hours later; and the Poet, settling to an uneasy sleep in his chair, mentally ruled out the Chelsea studio.
"The ordinary surveyor's no use," broke in the Lexicographer, pursuing his own line of thought. "What you want is a drainage expert."
"I know these good, honest, middle-aged couples," cried the Iron King with the bitterness of an oft-defrauded widower. "The woman always drinks, and them man always steals the cigars…"
"I have nothing but gas in my place," said the decorous voice of the Private Secretary, "and I have it on pretty good authority that there'll be a great coal shortage this winter. I don't want that to go any further, though…"
The Millionaire rose to his feet with a yawn.
"He must get an experienced woman-friend to help him with things like carpets and curtains," he ordained with mellow benevolence. "When my wife comes back from Wales…. How soon do you have to turn out, Poet?"
The Poet woke with a start and looked at the clock. The time was a quarter to two, and he still wanted to go to bed.
"Ten days," he murmured drowsily.
"Jove! You haven't much time," said the Millionaire. "Now, look here; the one thing NOT to do is to be in a hurry. Any place you take now will probably have to serve you for several years, and you'll find moving a lot more expensive than you think. If you can get some kind of shake-down for a few days,—" he turned expansively to his friends—"we may be able to give you a few hints."
The Poet became suddenly wakeful and alert.
"Do I understand that you're offering me a bed until you find me permanent quarters?" he enquired with slow precision.
"Er—yes," said the Millionaire a little blankly.
"Thank you," answered the Poet simply. "I say, d'you men mind if I turn you out now? It's rather late, and I haven't been sleeping very well."